Cuban Syndicates (North America)

Cuban ethnic mafia (Bautista Family - red, Possible outfits - pink)

The Cuban Syndicates are Cuban-American criminal syndicates in North America.

Overview

Fifth World

Early Cuban-American Mafia

The Cuban mafia had its origins in the early 20th century. In the United States, there was already a Cuban mob in the city of Tampa in Florida which competed with and waged war against rival Anglo and Italian mobs for control of the cities rackets in the 1920s.[1] It was in NY City though that the early Cuban-American racketeers made their mark, in the numbers rackets of Harlem. In the 1920s there were two Cuban numbers racketeers who became famous. One was Marcellino, who was Spanish Harlem's largest banker in a city of 30 numbers bankers (many of them Cuban), employing over 100 bet collectors (when most bankers employed 12-30 bet collectors) in a racket that in 1924 was generating $10s of millions a year. The most successful bankers earned the label King or Queen, and Marcellino was the first to earn that title in NY City. He controlled much of the gambling by Spanish-speakers. Marcellino displayed the flashy style that the numbers kings and queens would come to be known by, driving up and down the streets in his chaffeur-driven limo. He lived in a palatial apartment which was adorned with a baby grand piano and imported chandeliers.[2][3]

The other one was Alex Pompez, who was born in Florida and was a member of the Republican party. He was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in the 1890s. In New York City, he became one of the major numbers racketeers in the 1920s. The Jewish racketeer Dutch Schultz forced him to join his organization in 1932. He later fled in 1936 to avoid prosecution by the state of New York for his involvement in the numbers rackets in NY City but returned years later to testify. The only informant in the history of the United States who went on to live in the US without being put in a witness protection program after testifying. He owned two black baseball teams, the Cuban Stars in the Eastern Colored League from 1923-1928 and the New York Cubans in the Negro National League from 1935-1951, and helped organize the 1942 Negro League World Series. He later became a scout for the New York Giants and a member of Baseball Hall of Fame.[4][5][6]

Mafia in Cuba

In Cuba, American racketeers were smuggling rum from Cuba, working with local gangs of hoodlums. Which in the 1930s was replaced by the cocaine trade, a business organized by two Corsicans, the Italian mafioso Santo Trafficante, and the Jewish racketeer Meyer Lansky. Cocaine at that time was a niche racket, as heroin dominated the drug trade in the United States. It was in the 1950s, the Mafia became a power in Cuba. Investing their wealth on the island, they went into partnership with Raul (Sugarcane) Bautista regime and turned Havana into sin city, a mecca of gambling, entertainment, and prostitution. Working for the Mafia were the local native gangsters. When Fidel Castro overthrew the government and established a communist regime in 1959, the first wave of Cuban refugees arrived in the United States.

La Compañía

When Raul Bautista fell, among the wave of honest hardworking people came the corrupt officials of the Cuban government's torture and killed cuban gangsters. After the failure of the Cuban exiles to take back Cuba in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, two crime syndicates where established in the United States by Cubans. One was La Compañía (The Company) which setup its headquarters in Miami. They had branches in New York City, Los Angeles, Tijuana, Las Vegas, Arizona, and Texas. It dominated the Latin American drug trade in the 1960s and early 1970s. La Compañía was importing heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. By the mid-1980s, the syndicate had over 200 members. It was "La Compañía" which taught the Colombians how to produce cocaine and they were the ones who organized the cocaine trade.[7]

The Corporation

The other syndicate was The Corporation whose origins could be traced back to the late 1950s. It was a gambling syndicate which was also involved in other rackets. When the Corporation was established in the United States, they partnered with the crime syndicate which ruled the American underworld, La Cosa Nostra who got a cut of the profits. It was founded by a tight group of well-armed Cuban racketeers who had been trained by the CIA. They were led by Jose Miguel Battle, a former policeman in the regime who worked in vice and who would liaison between the government and Santo Trafficante. He later helped the CIA trained the exiles who would attempt to invade Cuba in 1961. They like the other Cuban syndicate (La Compañía) were based in Miami. It was run by a "board of directors" with Jose Battle as it's chairman. The "board members" exerted a level of control over specific operations. Running the betting operations were the "bankers". In the 1990s, the syndicate had 2,500 members.

The organization's main source of income was illegal gambling. They installed, maintained, and oversaw video gambling machines in 100s of small business venues (e.g. restaurants, laundries, grocery stores, etc). It ran betting networks that took bets for horse races and sold numbers tickets. The Corporation was also involved in drug trafficking (mostly cocaine) and cargo theft (hijacking trucks). It was a syndicate which firebombed the business establishments of rivals and rigged cars to explode with grenades. The syndicate operated in the United States, the Caribbean, Europe, and both Central and South America. It was estimated to be making $45 million a year in bolita (Spanish lottery) in Florida, New York City, and New Jersey in the 1970s. By the 1985, they were earning $168 million a year from bolita and $45 million a year from illegal horse-racing betting and the numbers lottery through 4,000 storefront sellers in NY City. In the early 1990s, the Corporation was making $100s of millions a year from gambling and drug dealing. Jose Miguel Battle was estimated to be worth $174 million in 1987, making him one of Dade County and Miami's wealthiest. In the 1980s, Jose Miguel Battle got tired of paying the Italians tribute and stopped payments. Resulting in a mob war with the Italians, though the latter failed to restore the vassalage of the Corporation.[8][9][10] [11][12]

Marielitos

During the Mariel boatlife of 1980, thousands of criminals were sent to the United States along with the real refugees by Fidel Castro. These killers, drug dealers, thieves, and pimps created a crime wave, mostly in Florida and came to be known as Marielitos. Some of them ended up working for "La Compañía" as hitmen and enforcers. Others formed gangs which were spread to major cities across the United States, wherever there was a sizable Latino community (e.g. Houston, NY City, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc). Most of these gangs were small and most of them were focused on drug dealing or drug trafficking, earning a reputation for high levels of violence. Two large Marielito gangs were established in Washington DC, the Mariel Bandidos and the Bautista Family with 500-1000 members each. During the 1990s these Marielito gangs disintegrated, were absorbed into other groups, or evolved and became low profile.[13][14][15][16][17] The story of the Marielitos received the Hollywood treatment in the 1983 movie "Scarface".[18]

Alberto-Sicilia Falcon

The greatest of the Cuban mobsters though was Alberto-Sicilia Falcon who became the pre-eminent drug trafficker in the Western Hemisphere in the mid 1970s. A homosexual, one of the few gay men to rise in the underworld. He left Cuba with the other exiles and for a short period worked with other Cuban exiles in retaking Cuba. Then in the late 1960s he moved to Mexico from Miami and got involved in the marijuana business. In the early 1970s he expanded his business into cocaine. His organization was earning $240 million a year from drug trafficking by the 1980s. The organization was also involved in the production and trafficking of weapons. Twice he was incarcerated, and twice he escaped, the last time via a 40 meter long tunnel. At first his headquarters was in Tijuana and later he relocated to Mexico City. His palatial Tijuana residence was a fortress, protected by laser beams and sensors. Protecting him were AK-47 equipped agents of the DFS (Dirección Federal de Seguridad - Federal Security Directorate), Mexico's secret police. He had a fleet of armored cars and boats at his disposal. Famous for throwing lavish parties attended by the rich, famous, and powerful. Some of those parties were drug and sex orgies.[19]

Los Muchachos

The last of the major Cuban-American crime syndicates prior to the Awakening was The Company which was founded in the late 1970s. The founders and leaders of the syndicate being "Los Muchachos" (the Boys), Salvatore "Sal" Magluta and Guillermo "Willie" Falcon, the last and greatest of the "Cocaine Cowboys". Who were the biggest smugglers of cocaine into the United States in the 1980s. They brought in at least $2 billion worth of cocaine from the Medellin and Cali Cartels from 1978-1991, over 75 tons. Both of "Los Muchachos" were globally-ranked world-class powerboat racers whose races were often broadcast on ESPN. Willie Falcon participated in a failed CIA-financed plot to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro in the 1990s and provided the right-wing Cuban exile paramilitaries (terrorist groups like Omega 7 and Alpha 66) with financing in the mid-1990s. [20] [21]

Sixth World

When magic returned to the world with a vengeance in the Awakening, the LCN took advantage of the chaos and opened its doors to the smaller criminal outfits. Most of the Cuban syndicates joined the new multi-ethnic Mafia. One of the Cuban factions, the Bautista Family became one of the major Mafia families with a seat in the Inner Circle of the Commission. The other factions were either absorbed into one of the 12 major families or became one of the 100+ minor families and associated groups.

Note

Due to where Cuban-Americans were concentrated and the location of historically documented Cuban-American syndicates (e.g. The Corporation, La Compania, and the various Marielito drug gangs), any independent Cuban ethnic mafias which still exist or Cuban crime families that are part of the American Mafia would most likely be located in the UCAS (NY City, Newark, & Chicago), the Pueblo Corporate Council (Los Angeles), or the CAS (Houston, Tampa Bay, & Orlando).

Index

• o05084094Underworld Sourcebook, 28, 30-31, 37, 73
• o33031982Vice, 33, 40, 86
• o65320053Hard Targets, 121-124

Cuban Mafia in the Real World

• Wikipedia: The Corporation
• Wikipedia: Marielitos
• Miami News Times: The Corporation
• NY Daily News: Cocaine Cowyboys

Cuban Mafia in the Media

• Scarface (1983)